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It was only in June that Apple introduced the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 2,560 x 1,600-pixel ‘Retina’ display, but the Cupertino-based company is following that up today with the another Retina display-equipped portable. This time round, it’s the 13-inch MacBook Pro that gets the upgrade.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (that's what Apple calls it) features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit IPS display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels (that's 227 pixels per inch!). Apple claims that the new display offers a 29% increase in contrast ratio and a 75% reduction in reflection compared to its predecessor, a wide 178-degree viewing angle, and 300 nits of brightness. The laptop measures just 1.9cm thin and weighs 1.62kg. In comparison, the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and 13-inch MacBook Air measure 1.8cm and 1.7cm thin, and weigh 2.02kg and 1.35kg respectively.

Like its 15-inch sibling, the new 13-inch version has two USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt ports, one HDMI port, and an SDXC card slot. Other things that are retained from the non-Retina display-equipped 13-inch MacBook Pro include 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 support, the 720p FaceTime HD camera, as well as the full-size, backlit keyboard. Unsurprisingly, Apple has dropped the FireWire 800 port and the SuperDrive (a combined CD/DVD reader/writer), and has gone with an all-flash architecture.

Processor-wise, the US$1,699 (S$2,388) base model features the 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 'Ivy Bridge' processor (Turbo Boost speed up to 3.1GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache, and the Intel HD Graphics 4000 processor (there's no option for discrete graphics). It has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of flash storage. If that isn’t powerful enough for you, you can configure it with the 2.9GHz dual-core Core i7 processor (Turbo Boost speed up to 3.6GHz) with 4MB shared L3 cache, and up to 768GB of flash storage. Apple also offers a US$1,999 (S$2,788) configuration that differs from the base model in just the flash storage capacity (256GB vs. 128GB). Interestingly, you can't upgrade to more than 8GB of RAM on any of the models.

According to Apple, this new 13-inch MacBook Pro can last up to seven hours on a single charge (wireless browsing with screen brightness set to 50%).

In the U.S., the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display models are available starting today. In Singapore, they will ship in four to six business days.